


Prologue

by leosaysgrrrr, LePetitChouNerd



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Action, Also hard self-reflection and difficult decisions, Also sort of an origin story, Angst, Cousins AU, Drinking, F/M, Family Dynamics, Fighting, Fluff and Angst, Hidden identities and ulterior motives, I mean there's a standoff, My OC being an asshole to everyone, Only porn if you get off on pure awesomeness, Pre-High Noon Kadara, Pre-Hyperion, and a fistfight, sort of, the start of a beautiful friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-11-23 14:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11403981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leosaysgrrrr/pseuds/leosaysgrrrr, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LePetitChouNerd/pseuds/LePetitChouNerd
Summary: Trying to survive on Kadara leads to an unlikely friendship between a woman with no name and no face and a smuggler with nothing to lose.  Things get interesting when the human Pathfinder enters the picture, because Sarianna Ryder's got more family in Heleus than she thinks.A collection of background drabbles.





	1. Friends in Low Places - Pt. I

Reyes Vidal would never claim to be among the smartest of men, but he had enough brains to notice when whiskey started losing its burn.

He watched the lights from the ceiling dance off of the amber liquid in the metal cup as he gave it a few quick swirls, looking as much a connoisseur of the stuff as one could in a place like this, and decided with a defeated sigh that Umi must be watering down his drinks again. All the more reason to let her pick up his tab, he supposed, and shrugged as he threw back the rest.

Almost the second his now empty cup hit the table, the ass of a woman in full armor layered with a thick patina of badlands grime dropped harshly into the chair across from him, a single ring of green light staring through him from a rather sinister-looking helmet.

“You Vidal?

Reyes didn’t know what he expected from someone who wouldn’t even bother to show her face before talking to him, but the rumbling, synthetic, hardly feminine at all sound that emanated through the modulators in her helmet was…jarring, to say the least. It was as if every species from the Milky Way was speaking to him at once; if he hadn't been staring right at her, it would've been almost impossible to pin down which she actually was. That ‘eye’ just kept staring, waiting for a response, and in that uncomfortable few moments of silence he regretted having been so hasty to finish his drink.

“Depends on who’s asking.”

“Someone who was told you might be able to help me.”

_Interesting…_

Ordinarily, he’d be a bit more wary of potential clients who kept themselves this hidden; he knew a thing or two about showing the world a face that wasn’t his own, and there wasn’t a single reason for it that didn’t drag along with it the possibility of being a massive pain in the ass down the road. Nevertheless, he _was_ getting tired of watered down whiskey.

“Not for free, I hope.”

“No shit,” she growled, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms in front of her. Classic closed-off posturing. “Wasn’t gonna ask if I couldn’t pay.”

“Well, now we’re talking,” he replied, and leaned forward, dropping an elbow on the table in front of him, a smirk forming at one corner of his mouth. Just because he couldn’t see her face didn’t mean he couldn’t use his own to his benefit. Tells came in all shapes and sizes, and weren’t limited to a person’s face.

“And please, call me Reyes.”

Her helmet hadn’t really felt like a disadvantage until she pushed back unexpectedly, dropping her own elbow on the table while keeping that unblinking stare burning right through his skull. Allowing the situation to remain weighed in her favor would never do, of course, and he searched for what little cue she might have given as to how he could regain the advantage so intently that he almost didn’t catch the name she gave him in return.

“Puck?”

A pieced-together attempt to pretend he’d been listening, but she didn’t even flinch.

“Sure.”

Fine. She was a challenge, and Reyes wasn’t the sort to shy away from a challenge. Not before he found out what kind of credits were involved, at least.  
  
“So, Puck…what sort of help is it you need?”  
  
She produced a bottle of a viscous, slightly red-tinged liquid, and sat it hard on the table between them.

“Know what this is?”

Reyes examined the bottle: it was Angaran, a tonic meant to relieve pain and ease headaches caused by their natural electromagnetic energy. Something like it had cropped up around the slums not long ago, courtesy of Sloane and her Outcasts, and that certainly wasn’t what it was being used for there.

“I believe I do.”

“Know where I can get more?”

Now, _that_ was interesting. True, this…‘Puck’, or whoever she really was, seemed a bit on edge, but not in the same way as someone desperate for a fix. If that was all she wanted, there was no reason she should be talking to him. The Outcasts were practically giving it away, provided you could pay Sloane’s protection fees, of course.

“Running drugs right under Sloane’s nose is a bit risky,” he said with a few cursory glances around the bar before his smirk resurfaced, his attention finally settling on that green ring once more. “Might cost you extra.”

“It’s not drugs, it’s medicine.”

Reyes had to chuckle a little at that deadpan delivery.

"One and the same as far as she’s concerned.”

“What the fuck ever. Can you get it for me or not?”

“Never said I couldn’t.”

“Never said you could, either.”

“All right, all right.” He picked up the bottle, balancing the neck between two fingers, and spoke pointedly to it while letting it rock back and forth, like he was some sort of hypnotist, about to ensnare her into accepting whatever ludicrous amount of credits he proposed. “Sloane’s competition here was unfortunately killed by scavengers recently, so I’d have to bring it in from Aya. Extra time, extra security, insurance that Sloane’s lackeys on the docks won’t confiscate it…month or so’s supply will run you…”

Time to really see what he could get away with here.

“Oh, about 1500 credits. Half now, half on delivery. I could have it here inside a week.”

Silence at first, but she leaned back in her chair again, and told him at least a variation of what he wanted to hear.

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

He really shouldn’t have been so surprised, but that was a lot of credits for such a little thing, and most people would’ve balked at being quoted that kind of price. Questions upon questions had been piling up from the moment this woman sat down, and it took everything he had not to let the tower fall. In his line of work, asking questions was bad for business.

“Yeah. Fine. 1500 credits, half now, half when I get it, for a month’s supply of…that.”

A few taps at her omni-tool, and Reyes Vidal was 750 credits richer. Never would get used to, or tired of that feeling.

“I’ll contact you when I’ve got it,” he said, staring her in the…well, as close to the eyes as he could, with a self-satisfied smile. “Pleasure doing business with you, Puck.”

The mysterious outlaw was already gone when Reyes finally stood to leave himself, but he didn’t make it far before Umi accosted him from behind the bar, arms crossed and eyes on fire.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going, Reyes?”

“Got work to do, Umi. See you around.”

If he’d actually expected that to work, he might’ve been disappointed when the bartender slowly shook her head while tapping one vexed finger on the bar.

“Not so fast, I just saw you get paid. My turn.”

Being 375 credits richer wasn’t quite the same as 750, but it wasn’t bad, either.


	2. Friends in Low Places - Pt. II

Puck wanted to meet in the badlands.

It was never a good sign when they wanted to meet in the badlands.

Especially not when the client hid her face, changed her voice, and he didn’t believe for a second that Puck was her real name. Not to mention the week he’d promised suddenly grew a couple of extra days, and even though the modulators in her helmet hid most of her vocal cues, Reyes could tell when they finally arranged the meeting that she was already annoyed with him.

The Angara called the place Puck’s navpoint brought him ‘Draullir’.

_Death caves._

Although appropriate, judging from the rotten egg smell of sulfur and the fresh animal carcasses near the entrance to this particular cave, the name didn’t do much to inspire confidence. Puck, for her part, had taken up a position well inside, in an alcove just before the tunnel opened up into a larger chamber. At a glance, Reyes counted at least two weapons, but he couldn’t exactly expect her to come to the badlands unarmed, could he? Hell, even he was armed, and he let one hand glide quickly over the Predator pistol resting at his hip. Judging from the brisk pace she kept when coming to meet him the second she laid eyes on him, she’d been waiting there for a while.

“That it?”

She was definitely annoyed.

“This is it,” he said, with a curt nod and a pat on the parcel tucked under his arm. Puck, predictably, took a few more brisk steps forward and reached out with one hand, as if he was going to let this prize go without getting his due.

“Ah-ah, credits first.”

The outlaw gave their surroundings a quick glance before opening her omni-tool, and Reyes took the time to check his merchandise. Everything intact, nothing out of place, a surprisingly easy transaction, given the circumstances. He even allowed himself a small sigh of relief at the knowledge that soon, he’d walk out of this foul-smelling cave 750 credits richer.

He drew that sigh back in a moment later, and every one of hairs on the back of his neck stood on end when, instead of the sound of a notification of the incoming credit transfer, the next sound he heard was a distinctly familiar stomach-churning combination of whirrs and clicks.

“Or you can just fucking give it to me.”

_Ah, shit._

She had a pistol pointed in his face.

 _Of course_ she had a pistol pointed in his face.

 

“Listen, just take it easy, okay?” He inched away from her, one hand holding onto the parcel for dear life, and the other extended, fingers splayed in a rather pitiful excuse for a shield between the business end of her pistol and himself. As if it would make any difference.

“You don’t want to kill me.”

Puck stood unnervingly still. No nervous trembling, no hint of insecurity that might give him an opening. At least, not that he could see.

 _Shit._ Had she planned this all along? Was she working with someone else, Sloane maybe? Taking him down for going around her and not giving her her cut? Who the hell _was_ she?

“Give me the medicine,” she growled, with only a slight movement to reinforce her stance. It wasn’t much of an opening, if it could be called such a thing at all, but, unwilling to lose out on the credits and unable to see any other option, Reyes decided to take his chances.

He reached forward with his extended hand as quickly as he could and slapped her wrist off to one side, then made a break for it towards the other while drawing his own pistol. Not even two steps in, he was almost blinded by a mess of electrical sparks, and narrowly managed to pull himself to a halt before what looked like a smaller version of a Krogan warlord’s hammer, its coils thrumming and arcing every which way and surrounded by an aura of dark energy, smashed to the ground right where his next step would have been.

As was his luck, presently, he also dropped his gun, which Puck smugly put one foot over before he could secure it again.

_Great. Just great. Now she’s a biotic, too? You sure know how to pick ‘em, Vidal._

Once he stabilized himself, he noticed Puck had brought the hammer up to rest on one shoulder, almost mocking him with her ability to even wield such a thing in the first place, and raised her pistol once more.

“Maybe I’ll just break your fucking legs, then.”

Almost involuntarily, Reyes started backing away from her again. To say he wasn’t the least bit scared would’ve been one of his greatest lies, and pretending he wasn’t was proving to be one of his greatest performances.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Puck kicked his gun behind her, and slowly stalked forward after him.

“Good thing you’re not, then.”

Not what he wanted to hear.

“Give me the medicine.”

_Stand your ground. Keep it together._

“I don’t think so.”

This could never end well. _Shit._ He searched her armored frame, from her boots to that ever-staring helmet, looking for something, _anything_ he could use to his advantage. Everyone had a weakness. There had to be _something._

She kept calling the stuff ‘medicine’, not drugs, but if she was sick enough or in enough pain to need that damned tonic so badly, she certainly wasn’t showing it.

_Of course._

“You’re…obviously perfectly healthy. It’s not for you, is it? You need it for someone else.”

Biotic energy erupted around her. “Shut your mouth.”

_Now we’re getting somewhere._

“That’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? Think about it, _Puck_ …you’re going to run out eventually. I’m your best bet for a steady supply and you know it. Kill me, or cut ties with me, and good luck getting anyone else to deal with you.”

His heart raced as his back hit the cold rock wall, and Puck had only to close the remaining distance. If she weren’t biotic, he may have been able to overpower her and escape, but as it were he ran lower and lower on options with each step she took forward.

 _There._ He’d have never noticed if she wasn’t right in front of him, but she held her pistol tightly enough that she trembled now. His words had struck a nerve, and she was starting to show it.

Time to pull out the big guns. Figuratively, of course. Reyes scolded himself for a moment for only thinking to bring a pistol in the first place.

“You do this, and you’re killing whoever you think you’re saving.”

Almost painful silence followed. Sweat dripped down his forehead, and his heart pounded in his ears. What the hell was she waiting for? His only way out was through her. There was nothing stopping her from pulling that trigger, taking that damned medicine, and leaving him to rot in that cave. Since that hardly sounded appealing, he gathered every bit of resolve he could muster, poured it into staring right through that garish green ring, and hoped the mask he made out of it could keep her from seeing just how fucking terrified he was.

Practically an eternity later, Puck sighed.

Then, she let the hand holding her pistol fall to her side.

Reyes could only stare in disbelief that he could possibly be that fucking lucky.

“I…”

The coils on her hammer hummed and arced again as its head hit the floor with a dull thud. Puck’s posture relaxed, although she didn’t take her hand off the hammer, and he got the sense that he might be able to breathe again.

“Look, I can’t pay you, okay? But my…my brother’s sick, and it was either you or Sloane.”

Reyes made a face, just a little offended that she’d thought he’d be easier to intimidate and rob than Sloane.

He wanted to pick up his gun, point it in her face and see how she liked it, maybe put a bullet in her leg for good measure, but…he believed her. Her helmet hid many things, but not the sincerity with which she’d just told him that. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that not everyone came to Andromeda alone. Some people survived the Scourge, the uprising, and made it to Kadara with the people they cared about, people they’d do anything for.

Including tricking a relatively green smuggler into procuring expensive Angaran medicine, and then trying to rob him for it.

He couldn’t really fault her for trying; she needed to find her feet here just as much as he did, only with the added burden of holding someone else up as well. Still, if he’d learned one thing, it was that compassion came with a price, and the revelation that he would not, in fact, be getting paid for this shit meant Reyes was a little short on credits at the moment.

“Well, I can’t just _give_ it to you. Bad for business.”

Her hand clenched around the end of the hammer, and he fully expected to be right back where he was a moment ago, certain he was a dead man. She only sighed, and turned her head away. As her shoulders sank, perhaps in acceptance of her failure, an idea came to him. Probably a very bad idea, given what had just happened. A complete and total gamble with no guarantees and the highest of risks, but also one that, if played right, could have the highest rewards.

“But, you obviously have some…useful skills. Perhaps we can help each other.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Kadara was no paradise for anyone, certainly not someone making a living outside what tenuous law presided over the lawless there. What better advantage could he possibly ask for if shit ever went sour for him again than a faceless biotic soldier wielding a goddamned krogan hammer on his side?  
And what better way to keep that faceless biotic soldier wielding a krogan hammer on his side than to be the reason her sick brother isn’t sick anymore?

“I let you have this precious medicine of yours, and you make sure my cargo gets where it needs to go without being picked off by scavengers or…whoever else.”

Puck cocked her head to one side, as if silently asking, _‘are you fucking kidding me?’_ Reyes almost wanted to ask himself the same thing.

“What, you want me to work for you?”

Did he? He hadn’t really thought about it that much, if he was being completely honest with himself. He’d never been less sure about a bet he’d already committed to in his life.

“Something like that. Unless, of course, you don’t think you can handle it.”

She scoffed.

“Of course I can handle it.”

Nothing but pure dumb luck could explain how this idiotic attempt to save his own skin was _actually working._

“So, I do this for you, and you’ll keep getting the medicine for me?”

He nodded.

“Like I said, steady supply. I promise.”

Like some kind of overconfident fool in front of an animal about to eat him, he flashed a far less than subtle wink, and slowly extended the offer of a supine hand.

“So, do we have a deal?”

Puck, in the most glorious sight he’d seen all day, anchored her pistol at her hip, and firmly grasped his outstretched hand.

“Yeah. Deal.”

He wanted to imagine she returned his lopsided smile under that helmet, but the curt nod she gave him would have to do for now. She’d have to take it off sometime, and they were going to be seeing a great deal more of each other in the future.

As the handshake broke, Reyes tucked the parcel back under his arm and gestured towards the still ominous hammer in her other hand.

“Can you, uh…put that thing away now?”

She did, impressively compacting the weapon into a shape that easily anchored at the small of her back.

“That’s better.”

With a deep breath to ready himself, he finally offered her her prize.

“It’s all yours.”

Puck didn’t yank it from him, only calmly pulled it from his hands once he was ready to release it. All things considered, it reassured him that maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

“I…thank you.”

Nothing ever quite melted the heart of a man only out for himself, and for credits, like an earnest statement of gratitude. Reyes let slip a soft, genuine smile as she turned to leave, and immediately felt compelled to say something to counteract it. He was, after all, too short on credits for compassion.

“Don’t make me regret this.”

“You won’t.”


	3. If You Say So

It would be this kind of people, outlaws whose eyes moved over anything close to them with a scheming spark of wonder at how much that particular item would net if they sold it, who thought calling this particular bit of the sweltering wasteland that is Elaaden “The Paradise” would be a good idea.  

It was perfect.

Puck grew up in a desert.  Not particularly her favorite place on Earth, but, it was home.  Slowly but surely, Kadara was beginning to feel like home, too.  And if Kadara was home, Elaaden, “The Paradise”, was the kind of place you dreamed of being sent on an all-expenses-paid business trip.  Sure, it was hot and dirty, covered in scavengers and dangerous wildlife and completely devoid of lush, white sand beaches, but at least there was a bar.

“All here?” Puck asked, inspecting the cargo manifest in her hand, the modulators in her helmet broadening and twisting her voice to the point of being unrecognizable, just the way she liked it.  She scoffed inaudibly as the turian woman folded her arms in unwarranted offense; if implicit trust was the goal, smuggling was probably not the best line of work.

“Yeah, everything’s there.  What, your boss doesn’t trust me now?”

Puck didn’t reply, and continued scrolling down the datapad.  Conveniently obscured by her helmet, a wry smile crept across her face; she could almost hear the rhythm of the turian’s heartbeat picking up, the tension as she waited for the mysterious masked mercenary’s approval growing almost palpable.  Good.  This was why Reyes sent her, wasn’t it?  The turian was becoming bothersome for him to deal with in person, but where the smuggler was roguishly charming, Puck, with her helmet’s cold, mechanical stare hiding anything that might make her seem even slightly friendly or relatable, was downright intimidating.  Although, she thought as she curled the fingers of one hand around its handle, the modified krogan hammer balanced over one shoulder probably helped.

“We’re good.”  A few pokes at her omni tool, and the transfer of credits was complete.  The turian’s relief was almost palpable, too.  

“Great.  Thank Reyes for me, would ya?”

“Credits would be better.”

“Whatever.”

The turian slunk away, pausing more than once to make sure Puck remained leaning against the wall, hammer over one shoulder, shotgun anchored to her back, just staring through the luminescent ring that served as her ‘eye’, before she finally disappeared from sight.  Puck let the hammer fall forward with a heavy thud as the head hit the floor, drawing a few easily disregarded angry looks from Annea’s other patrons, and breathed heavily to ready herself for the not entirely pleasant task of loading her shuttle for the trip home.  Just as she managed to gather her resolve and shoved off of the wall, compacting the hammer so it could be anchored at the small of her back, she was accosted by a new voice aiming to, quite annoyingly, hinder her departure.

“Excuse me,” it said, “did you just say you work for someone named Reyes?”

The question itself was little more than an inevitable nuisance; Reyes knew everyone, and she would invariably walk paths he had walked before, and cross those of others he’d crossed.  This voice, however, was bright and vibrant, small but making great effort to seem much larger; it hit Puck’s ears with such a stab of familiarity that its owner may as well have used her real name.  

“Maybe,” she replied, with a half-assed look over her shoulder as she situated the compacted hammer on her back.  “Who’s asking?”

“Sara Ryder.  Pathfinder.”

_No fucking way._

Few situations made her more grateful that no one in that room, or anywhere, really, could see her real face or hear her real voice than turning around to find that she really had run into Sara fucking Ryder.  Here, of all places.  Seeing her on Kadara was one thing, an unwelcome kink thrown into her acceptance that all she had left of her family was the brother she’d left hidden in that bunker in the badlands, and everyone and everything else that had been her life in the Milky Way was gone. Then, she’d been alone enough to lift her helmet to wipe away the few errant tears that escaped with the realization that she had more left than she’d thought.  A fleeting bit of sentimentality, and one she brushed off easily once the Pathfinder faded from her sight.  Now, here she was again, right in front of her.

_And Ryder had no idea who she was talking to._

Puck, certainly never one to turn down a chance for mischief, couldn’t have resisted if she’d wanted to.

“Pathfinder?” she repeated incredulously, training the unblinking gaze of her helmet on the small, violet-haired woman and folding her arms in front of her chest.  “I expected some washed up old special ops guy, not a nosy little thing like you.”

“Yeah, I’m just full of surprises.”

Puck couldn’t hold back a condescending huff, and a corresponding upward tilt of her head, just to make the diminutive Pathfinder feel her height more than she already did.

“I’ll bet you are, like a kaerkyn on a day-old corpse.”

One of Ryder’s eyebrows quivered just so, and raised a little with her confusion at what, exactly, she meant by that.  

“Do you have some sort of problem with me, whoever you are?”

A smirk tugged hard at one corner of her mouth, smugly hidden behind electronics and metal, and she eased backwards against the wall once more.  It was cute, really, this little tough girl act.  The more things changed, the more things stayed the same.

“Not yet.  Name’s Puck.”

“Puck?” Ryder replied, with a bit of exaggerated disbelief.  It wasn’t the most elegant name, to be sure, but she wasn’t the one who’d chosen it.  Not that she’d choose differently now; being Puck, wearing that helmet as her face, had begun to grow on her.  

“That’s what I said.”

Ryder jutted an indignant hip out to one side and offered the outlaw a familiar scowl that only served to stretch the smirk beneath the mask even wider.

“So, Reyes?”

Puck turned her attention away from the Pathfinder then, focusing instead on the other inhabitants of The Paradise through the window, fanning themselves from the heat.  Ryder herself glistened with sweat, but with Puck’s attention dismissively turned elsewhere, the redness in her cheeks wasn’t just from the heat anymore.

“What about him?”

“You said you work for him?”

She centered her mechanical eye on the Pathfinder once again as she replied, ominously lowering her voice even before it passed through the modulators.

“Not to you.”

Ryder wasn’t phased.  Well, perhaps a little.  She’d gotten better at hiding it, at least.  “But you do.”

“Why?  You got a job for us?”

“No, I just…” Ryder’s face flushed for a different reason as she searched for the right words to explain why, exactly, she’d chosen to ask this stranger about the man she worked for, and Puck couldn’t help but twitch a little with amusement at how terrible she remained at hiding _that_.  “We know each other.”

This was just too good.  She made this too damn easy.

“And that makes you special somehow?  Reyes knows everyone.”

Ryder glanced away momentarily at that, as if she’d fallen completely apart in an instant, then pulled herself back together just as quickly.  Pathfinders can’t afford to show weakness, Puck supposed.

“Yeah, been getting that a lot.”

Puck shifted in mock exasperation.  If this woman, whose continued existence was essential to the success of the Initiative, had made a habit of approaching shady characters to ask if they knew this guy she barely knew herself, well…there wasn’t much Puck could do to keep herself from ragging on her about it.  

“Look, I’ll tell you what I tell everyone else, _Pathfinder_.  I move cargo for credits.  I’m not here to carry your love letters.”

Honestly, she should have been expecting it.  Still, the split-second horror on Ryder’s face was intensely satisfying, and pulled Puck’s concealed smirk into a full-blown grin.

“Love letters?!”

Puck imagined that, had she not had her two subordinates and everyone else in that dingy room watching her, she would’ve descended into a flurry of denying hands.  It was the usual response to being called out like that, but Ryder held her composure, if only just.  Only a few nervous, sideways looks and a scratch at her opposite arm accompanied what could otherwise have been quite an entertainingly emphatic denial.  Almost admirable.

“No, that’s…that’s not…”

She let the Pathfinder fight herself for an explanation for a moment more, and let the slow, exaggerated nod tell her just how much she was buying it.

“Yeah.  That’s what I thought.”  Ryder only stared back, those dinner-plate eyes probably hoping against hope that Puck really believed her.  As fun and nostalgic as this was, however, Puck had a job to do, and she’d dallied here long enough.  She shoved off the wall once again, with the same heavy sigh, and growled,  

“Now, if you’re done, I’ve got shit to do.” 

With that, she strode past the Pathfinder and out towards her shuttle, barely acknowledging the other woman’s presence and making quite sure that her shoulder sent her teetering backwards as she passed.

Puck’s willpower was much greater than the turian’s, it turned out, and she didn’t glance back until she’d loaded the shuttle and was ready to take off.  After a quick glance back towards Annea’s little slice of The Paradise, she took her leave of that sweltering wasteland, punched in the course to Kadara, and sat back to report in to the boss.

Reyes answered, as he always did, with a curtly spoken version of his own name and the sound of a man trying to sound more professional than he wanted to be.  

“It’s Puck.  Heading back.”

“Good work.  Any trouble?”

If there’d been trouble, she’d have said so, and he knew it.  He also knew that she’d have handled it.  At this point, the question was a mere formality to make sure anyone who did similar work for him didn’t get jealous.

“No trouble.” No nothing, really, except that encounter with Ryder.  Thinking back on it, she couldn’t resist just a _tiny_ bit more mischief.  “Ran into another one of your admirers, though.”

“Admirers?”

Puck almost snorted inside her helmet.  As if that bastard didn’t know _exactly_ what she was talking about.

“Yeah.  Another starry-eyed girl getting her skivvies in knots because someone said your name.”

Reyes chuckled, obviously quite pleased with himself.  “Well, I _am_ quite charming.”

“If you say so.”  He didn’t pay her enough to stroke his ego, nor did he make this nearly as fun as Sara had.  “Anyway, it was no one special.”

“If you say so.”  An almost necessary part of their line of work was that facetious suspicion lacing those words, that unwillingness to say what they meant or to believe anything the other said.  She didn’t look forward to the prying she’d get upon her return.  

“Oh, and Puck?”

“What?”

“Don’t crash my shuttle.”

Puck shook her head.  “I’ll see you at Tartarus, ass.”

Maybe next time she ran into Ryder, she’d tell her cousin who she really was.

Maybe.


	4. Six Drink Sara - Pt. I

Six drink Sara was a phenomenon hitherto unknown. 

Sure enough, one drink Sara has made constant appearances here and there. Any form of mild celebration or any need to diffuse an otherwise awkward social environment could always be helped with some liquor courage. 

Two drink Sara was less common but not infrequent. It was a dancey kind of state-of-being that wrought havoc in many a parties. Collateral damage included embarrassing vidcon calls and vandalized private property. 

Three drink Sara was less destructive and more verbally incisive. The Romans, lost now to the annals of antiquity, once claimed “in wine, truth.” Well, in Sara’s case, truth had to slush through three fruity drinks, all involving tequila. Three drink Sara made an appearance about five times in her life: twice during a long and drawn out break-up, and once during a bitter fight with her brother. 

Four drink Sara happened every New Year’s party. She normally downed them in succession so as to bypass the preceding phases of her alcoholism. It was the sort of famed “black out drunk” that she would promise to be rid of come next day, but the temptation to swim in spirits at the end of every year was much too strong. 

Five drink Sara had only happened once. She was single, desperate, and teetering at the edge of academic probation in graduate school. The one available outlet for a frustrated grieving pupil like Sara was a one-night-stand she’d rather not remember, and that was that. 

The sixth drink, as mentioned, has yet to happen, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. At this point, Sara’s face was pasted on a dance pole while the entirety of her body lay limp against a wall. Her eyes were closed, wearied from a hard night’s work. Still, it didn’t stop her from setting a low-toned growl anytime a passerby offered to move her. 

SAM, meanwhile, labored tirelessly to clear out her bloodstream.

“Hey, Pathfinder!” 

Kian’s voice was honestly the last thing she wanted to hear at that moment. 

“Had about enough?” 

“Ggnnngh,” she grumbled quite irreverently. 

“Listen, I can move you to the lounge. Got a bit more privacy there.” 

The barkeep ran a helpless hand through his scalp. Kian wasn’t one for playing cordial host, least of all to guests too drunk to truly know the merits of such sacrifice. Yet, it would look especially bad if the boss came back and found his… “sweetheart” near-unconscious by a dance pole. It would look _really_ bad.

“Pathfinder…” 

“Gnngh Awnnnngy!” The command came out in a half-mumble. Eyes and face still plastered shut, her hand waved around in a failed attempt to swat him out like a fly. “Nnnnngnhtirednn…” 

“Well, if you’re tired, I can send for your people, eh? Your ship isn’t far. No trouble at all-…” 

“NNNnnngh!” 

Sara shook her head violently, momentarily threatening to lose her balance and make even more of a scene and setting herself and the bartender at quite the obnoxious impasse. Reyes would come back. He _had_ to, and she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to be standing right here when he did. Kian, irritatingly undeterred, folded his arms in front of his chest and muttered something about never giving free drinks to high-profile patrons again. 

All the while, SAM remained a busy bee. 

_Sara, I managed to slightly lower your blood alcohol concentration. You should be able to speak more coherently now._

Since the opportunity presented itself… 

“Kian…go…awayyyyyy!” 

Her arm managed to swat at him quicker than before, but, thankfully for Kian, her reflexes were still much too depressed to stand a chance against the otherwise mediocre movements of a fully sober person. 

“Ryder, don’t make a fuss now, eh? It isn’t good for business if the Pathfinder’s passed out half dead on my floor!”

Kian inched closer in slow and steady movements, lest he frighten her into utter hostility. “Let’s just calm down… relax…”

He muttered an endless string of words to coax her into compliance. It almost worked, too. His hands were just within reach of her shoulders. The poor bartender broke out into a sweat, no doubt ridden with the anxiety of the plan ultimately failing. 

“Just calm down. Everything will be o-…!” 

Sara’s arm leapt from her side once more, and a Ioud thud thundered against his jaw as if the very bones holding his face together quaked upon impact. Kian flew in one fell swoop down to the floor, making an ungraceful landing. Drunk as she was, Sara Ryder could really pack an uppercut. 

 “ _Fuck!_ ” 

Kian scrambled away, clutching at his nose and loudly spouting curses as blood oozed across his cheeks. Sara, on the other hand, remained in her stupefied state; blessed was she, at five drinks, for she would never even remember what she had done to poor, innocent Kian. 

“Yeah, it’s your fucking girl.” 

Kian had a frozen slab of space cow pressed against his jaw, trying to do his best to yell as loudly as possible without letting the levels of pain exceed a certain threshold. He made sure to stand in full view of the holo, hoping that the sight of him could speak for itself. 

“What are you on about?” Irritation lined Reyes’s voice, clearly unamused by whatever sort of inconvenience befell his bartender.  He knew, of course, and despite the pricks of genuine concern in the back of his neck it was quite high on the list of things he’d rather not have to deal with at the moment.

“The _Pathfinder!_  Do you see my face? Do you see it?! Look at it!” 

He made sure to point at the bloodied streak scarring his face. Reyes was grateful at the moment that the technology of vidcon calls hadn’t quite reached a state where the aggravated roll of his eyes would come through crystal clear on the other end. 

“Calm down, Kian!” 

As if _that_ was ever going to work. 

“ _You_ calm down! I don’t get paid enough for this shite. I’m charging you extra, just so you know. I’m slapping a protection fee on that damn room!” 

Reyes pinched the bridge of his nose in an effort to gather what he could of the remainder of his patience. 

“What exactly do you want me to do about it? I’m not just sitting on my ass while you play babysitter!” 

“Do _something_!“ Kian retorted. It was a fair enough demand, he thought. “She’s _your_  girlfriend!” 

“She’s not-…” The sentence was almost a reflex, but, come to think of it, it wasn’t a decision they had made just yet. The very distinction seemed somewhat academic given the nuisance he was presented with for that evening. 

“Nevermind!” he groaned through gritted teeth. “I’ll take care of it.” 

He hung up the call before he could hear Kian sing an inaudible praise of _hallelujah_. Time was of the essence, and he wasn’t about to dilly-dally in the midst of a such a sensitive operation. Without losing a beat, Reyes called the most reliable person he could think of. 

An uncomfortably long time passed before the armored hologram flickered into existence in front of him. The insufferable smartass always took her sweet time to answer, but answer she did. 

“What?” 

Straight to the point. That was how he knew she was reliable. “I need a favor.” He looked nervously around, as if watching for time to pass him by in the precious seconds he took making such backdoor deals. 

“It’s almost like you’ve ever called me for anything else.” 

“You’re a riot, Puck,” he said bitterly, not exactly willing to be out-witted in their banter. Reyes then quickly wound back to the matter at hand. “I need you to grab someone for me.” 

“Well, I can do that,” she said with unnecessary innuendo. He could almost hear the smirk behind her mask. Normally, he would extend the joke, but both time and Kian’s patience were running thin. 

“You’re looking for Sara Ryder. Tartarus. I’d appreciate it if you could _safely_ ,” - he paused to make sure that the keyword was properly and exaggeratedly enunciated- “return her to her ship. I’ll send you the navpoint for the docking bay.” 

An unexpected pause followed through the line. Her holographic image was so still, Reyes thought the line froze and was cut off. 

“Puck?” 

“I got it,” she answered almost immediately, dispelling the jarring effect of her hologram’s motionlessness. She crossed her arms, readying for a joke. 

“So, I’m taking out your trash now, too?” 

Barring the jab, Reyes couldn’t have heard sweeter words. A sigh of relief rolled through his shoulders after moments of tense aggravation. He quickly gave his send-off before rushing out. 

“Don’t make me regret this.” 

The soundless static of a dead line briefly filled the room before fading back into ambient noise. The Charlatan could now resume his work unimpeded.


	5. Six Drink Sara, Pt. II

The water slapped like knives against her face. Sara rose from unconsciousness with a howling gasp.

“What the fuck?!”

Her eyes darted around for an explanation. She saw nothing but a familiar alley - a pile of old freighters topped in leaning towers and garbage piles that gave off an authentic slums feel. Somewhere, the faint beating of Tartarus’s music drummed into an ever expanding distance.

“SAM?”

Her plea was indeed met by a synthetic, mechanical voice, but not SAM.  Its chaotic baritone was slightly familiar, but not at all in a good way.

“Oh, goody.  You’re awake.”

Another splash of water struck her in a wave. Her cheeks were red as she shivered in drenched panic.

“What the-…”

She could hear the swing of a bucket, and the third - and hopefully final - cascade of water descended upon her like ice.

“WILL YOU STOP THAT!?

“Sure, when it stops being funny.”

“Son of a…” Her fingers wove through her soaked and knotted hair falling like slabs of sticking to her face. More than the chilly air of a Kadara evening, she could feel the sharp pang of an alcohol-soaked brain raze through her mind.

“ _Fuck_ …” Her hand quickly reached for her temple, rubbing so as to soothe the sting.

“ _Language_ ,” taunted the inhuman voice once more.  Sara managed to massage enough of the pain away to see relatively straight, but she couldn’t quite recognize the fully armored figure standing over her.

“Who the hell _are_ you?!”

_Pathfinder, you are located somewhere behind Tartarus club. Identity of your assailant unknown._

“My _assailant_?!”

It took Sara a moment to realize that the momentary burst of static was just the stranger’s condescending huff through that hideous helmet.

“I mean, if you want me to be.”

The stranger grabbed Sara by the arm and jerked her into the air, forcing her onto her feet. The rather sudden shift caught her in a dizzying blur. It was hard enough playing a balancing act with gravity staggering her movements, but she had to deal with the harsh, constant tug of the stranger’s grip. Any longer and Sara swore her arm would pop loose from its socket.

“Hey!  Let…go of me!”

No such luck, of course.  If anything, the stranger’s armored hand seemed to squeeze her arm even harder.

“Sorry, Pathfinder, can’t risk it.”

_Pathfinder, I can switch you to Soldier profile for increased strength and dexterity._

“Do it.”

“What-…”

Sara brusquely pulled back her arm and followed her momentum with a forceful shove onto the assailant. The sound of dry ground cracking against their weight echoed throughout.

“You little-!”  She tried unsuccessfully to land a blow, but Sara quickly parried with her own fists.

“NOT TODAY, ASSHOLE!”

Sara swung a staggered left that barely scraped the intended target of the stranger’s helmeted jaw, then followed with a right that somehow managed to crack into her opponent’s ear - well, the part of the helmet where an ear should’ve been.  A squeamishness seized her before she could pull another punch, giving her opponent time to shake off the impact and turn the tide in their little tug of war.

A second. A numbing irruption of a second was all it took, and Sara felt a strike sink into her stomach. Her eyes struggled to make sense of it all as her vision blackened into the grime of muddy soil.

“That won’t leave a bruise…I hope.”

“Listen, Pathfinder,” the now-victorious assailant growled into Sara’s ear as a knee dug into the middle of her spine and an arm twisted behind her back prevented any further struggle, “all I need is to get you to your ship. No fuss. No crying and-… wait, stop!”

Sara couldn’t help it. She breathed in the stench in the soil, the sweat beading down her skin, and always pervasive gases floating about in this junk heap of a city. It certainly didn’t help getting flailed off and pulled every which way. Quick bouts of dry heaving turned into a shakiness in her limbs.  The stranger’s hold on her loosened a bit in anticipation of what was to come, and then the whole world seemed to swirl - and the contents of her stomach with it.

“…Okay, that’s just gross.”

She couldn’t quite hear or see the stranger after that. The seconds that followed were drowned out by the almost deafening noise of retching.

“Hey, you gonna be-…”

More vomiting. Sara wasn’t sure which was more horrifying: the slushing sound of putrid bile or the almost sulfuric taste of it in her mouth.

“Oh god!”  She barely managed to choke out the words before the broiling knot of sick swelled in her stomach.

“Yeah…okay, let’s just…move it along, this way!”

She felt a tug at her arm, leading her the way one leads a child instead of a prisoner, and the feeling of her feet trudging through mud. Sara wasn’t sure as she could make sense of nothing save the nauseated whirr of blurred images. Was there only one stranger? Or two? Two helmeted strangers? _Oh boy…_

“Right there. Into that dumpster.”

A hand knotted the base of her hair into a coiled bun and pivoted her neck like a crane. Sara would complain, but she was much too busy retching.

Sara couldn’t really feel much. A burning in her throat trailed by a lingering aftertaste of oak and ash monopolized her senses. All she could focus on was breathing deep. Kadara’s air, however smoggy, seemed to cool the searing pain. It didn’t at all occur to her that the very stranger whom she fought and wrestled with now stood by her side. Although the retching cleared enough of the intoxication, she wasn’t quite ready to comprehend that it was also this same person who rubbed her back and held her hair in an improvised knot.

“Got it all out?”

“Who-” Sara paused to wipe a slither of bile from the corner of her mouth. “Who _are_ you?”

A stretched out second seemed to fill in for a response.

“We should get some water in you.”

With a good bit of the alcohol now gone from her system, either through SAM or sick, Sara finally managed to get a good look at her far from pleasant company.

“Wait!” She reached out and struggled to grab her. “I know you!”

It didn’t make a lick of sense.  It was definitely the same person, but…how could it be?  The lone green ‘eye’ on the helmet.  That voice.  A name went with it, something ridiculous that she remembered scoffing at, wondering why anyone would ever willingly call themselves such a thing, but exactly what it was escaped her.  Flashes of deserts, and the question that introduced them in the first place.

_You work for Reyes?_

Something of a cackle accompanied her realization. Her speech slurred, as lopsided as her grin. “You’re that… that _bitch_ from Elaaden! Ha ha!”

The last laugh sounded more like a piggish squeal. Perhaps not all the alcohol had left Sara’s system.  

“Congratulations, you recognized a helmet.  Want a fucking medal?”

That sounded more like the henchman she met.

“Reyes sent you?”

The faceless mask menaced her with nothing save an uncomfortable silence. “I have to get you home.”

“No!” Sara lost her footing and found herself stumbling backward. Her carelessness gently guided her to a wall, safely cradling her wobbly legs. “Don’t touch me,” she barked in a drunken snarl.

The stranger bobbed her head to the side, as if exasperated with the delay of a skirmish she had suffered just moments prior. “Just be a good girl and go home to your fucking crew.”

The Pathfinder adamantly held up her hand in a defiant last stand.

“No!” She shook her head once more to emphasize her stance on the matter. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She tried to focus her sight on the flickering light above them. It was dimming, shaking even.

_Pathfinder, you are not well enough to engage in combat._

Sara would have shouted back a livid denial of the fact, but another knot of sick in her throat started to swell. Her hand felt for grooves against the wall that supported her.  

“Reyes sent you?” Sara asked again, unsatisfied with the trend of ambiguous answers.  The stranger gave a pointed, mocking shrug, throwing out her hands and tilting her head, as if the answer was so obvious the question shouldn’t have needed to be asked.

“Yeah?”

Of _course_ he had.  She knew it the moment she recognized that stupid helmet, but that didn’t lessen the sting of that dismissive confirmation that Reyes Vidal would not be making an appearance tonight.  Her chest had only just begun to calm into embers, but reignited at the thought that he actually had the gall to send a lackey - and a particularly rude one at that - to ‘take care of her’ the way one takes care of a household pest or that embarrassing relative no one wants to admit relation to.  She may have overlooked such a slight when her mind was in a state to rationalize it, but as it were she was far from capable of such.

“Tell your boss that, until he comes here with a personal apology, he can go fuck himself.”

Seeing as neither were currently in short supply, she gathered a pool of spit and bile in her mouth and, with all the strength she could muster, spat it directly into that unblinking green ring of an eye.  

A bluish-purple flash of biotic energy erupted and formed an ominous corona around the stranger’s form.  Sara’s eyes widened, and she gasped as she struggled to flatten her back against the wall.  SAM was right; she was in no condition to fight, but the energy - and the tension - faded a moment later with the stranger’s heavy shrug.

“What the fuck ever.  I’m not here to be your goddamned couples’ counselor.  He told me to get your sloppy drunk ass back to your ship, so that’s what I’m gonna do.”

He didn’t say that, did he?  He wouldn’t have.  Then again, she also thought he’d show up to get her drunk ass back to her ship himself.  A lot of questions as to how accurate her judgment of what Reyes Vidal would or wouldn’t do really was shoved their way to the forefront in an almost frighteningly short amount of time.

“No!’ Sara swung a tightened fist. The edge of her knuckle barely scraped past the lackey’s helmet, but she quickly stepped to the side, causing Sara to stagger and lose all sense of balance. Another wave of nausea stuffed the air up in her lungs. She could vaguely recall a heaping of pink slush landing on the other’s boot.

“FUCK!”

Sara watched the stranger raise a closed fist almost in slow motion, and instinctively maneuvered to avoid the incoming blow.

“Wait? Hey-, _hey_!

One second she was getting ready to parry. But in the next, her voice seemed to sink even deeper in tone. Slowing and yet barely audible. The outlines of her figure seemed to blend with the background. All turning black.


	6. Six Drink Sara, Pt. III

_Pathfinder, the morning shift is beginning._

Sara’s half-embarrassed realization that SAM had never needed to say those words to her before was quickly overtaken by intense throbbing pressure in her head.  No amount of burying her face in pillows would alleviate the intense pain she should have expected, if she was being completely honest with herself, from last night’s attempt to escape an entirely different kind of pain.  With the sort of heavy groan one gives when their body fully refuses to cooperate, Sara managed to spill off of the bed like a viscous fluid.  She jammed the heels of both hands into her forehead as she rose to her feet far more quickly than she should have, sucking the air around her in through gritted teeth.

The decently low lighting of the Tempest’s lower deck felt garishly bright as Sara staggered out of her quarters, still groaning, hugging the wall and using one hand as a visor.  Someone already had coffee on in the galley; a straight walk there and back was all the pathfinding she felt up to in her current condition. 

“Well.  You look like hell.”

Normally, the silken flange of Vetra Nyx’s voice was a comfort - a relief, even.  Now, it served only to increase the tempo of the pulsing ache in her head, and it didn’t help that Sara knew the turian’s observation was an objective truth.

“Thanks,” she huffed, carefully turning to face her friend and forcing her eyes into a glower she hoped appeared more unamused than completely miserable.

“Rough night?”

“You could say that.”

Vetra breathed an amused chuckle, and offered Sara a cup of coffee.  “How much did you drink?”

“Too much.”  The aroma swept into her nose as she cradled the Initiative-branded mug in her hands, and for just a moment she felt a bit of the shifting in her stomach ease.  Just a bit, though.  

“Ugh, I don’t ever want to even see alcohol again.”

“I’ll tell Liam to hide his beer stash, then.”

The laughter came before Sara was ready for it, and the lingering queasiness returned soon after.  A quick sip of coffee quelled the waves in her stomach for the moment, but the calm was short lived.  Soon after taking in the soothing warmth of the caffeinated beverage, a throbbing gnawed at her temples, as if to remind her of a very obstinate headache.  

“How’d I get back here, anyway?”

“Guy from the docks brought you up.  Said someone else walked off the lift from the slums with you over their shoulders and dropped you off in the bay.”

Vetra’s narration, however sparse, prompted enough of a recollection that seemed to worsen the lingering headache.  The sound of a strange yet coaxing voice and the burning in her throat flashed through her head in incomprehensible episodes.

“You…really don’t remember?”  

Sara let her eyelids rest briefly while she slowly turned her head ever so slightly from side to side, confirming Vetra’s suspicions in the least nauseating way possible.

“I must’ve blacked out.  But…”

She scrunched her nose in that telltale sign of focused contemplation, mulling over the strewn about pieces of her memory.

“What?”

“It’s probably nothing,” she said, punctuating her dismissal with a cautious sip, “but I had the weirdest dream.”

* * *

 

Puck kept herself busy while waiting for the Pathfinder to come to by rehearsing all of the most vulgar ways she could think of to tell Reyes to deal with his own spurned lovers from now on.  Although, ‘spurned lovers’ wasn’t that accurate of a term, now that she thought about it, especially not in this case.  Truthfully - and the breadth of knowledge she possessed regarding her friend’s personal life nearly caused Puck to start dry heaving herself - almost none could be considered ‘lovers’ at all; Reyes had mastered the art of honeyed words and bedroom eyes, but most of his famed ‘trysts’ involved little more than a few drinks and some god awful lines, and never made it past Umi’s door.  

Not her, though.  Of course, it had to be Sara Ryder that actually got to him.

Propped in a heap against the wall next to her, Sara let out a lazy groan in her sleep.  It was a faint but nonetheless sure sign she was alive, but Puck had to make sure of more than that.  She lodged a forefinger against the Pathfinder’s cheek, letting her head fall limply to the side.

Out like a candle.

As far as Puck was concerned, there was only good news to be had from the “mission.”  For one, if Sara came back to her crew in less than “safe” conditions, it wasn’t anyone but the alcohol’s fault - least of all hers.  And two, taking her back at that moment was as safe as it was going to get.

With a gruff sigh, Puck shifted in preparation to carry all that dead weight over her shoulder.  

“Well, Beans, it’s now or never.”

She wasn’t quite sure where the ultimatum came from, nor did she have the slightest idea in hell why, in the most opportune moment she’d had in a shitshow of an evening, she stalled.  What was certain, however, was the hint of relief - a slow, liberating weightlessness of being able to say the name out loud.  It was enough to distract her, and she held fast, even for just another moment, to that intensely satisfying rush of being able to talk to her cousin again.

Standing there before her unconscious figure, Puck realized hauling her to the docks in this condition would be much easier than having to drag Sara back to her ship kicking and screaming. Now, their ill-gotten moments of quiet afforded her some time to think, and thinking always led to dangerous things.

“Shit, if you hate _him_ ,” Puck began with an aloof shrug of her shoulder, “then you must hate me.” The last word faded off with the drone of her helmet’s voice changer.

Sara answered with a yawn, a move that nearly wrought havoc in Puck’s otherwise calmly aloof demeanor. To her relief, Sara merely shifted to her side as her mouth hung slightly agape - sure signs that she remained ever so deeply asleep.

Patience never was Puck’s strong suit.  Especially not when she had an itch, as was often the case when one was constantly covered head to toe in armor, and a perfect way to scratch it stared her right in the face.  

“Lot of shit’s going on right now.  You probably wouldn’t believe me, but I’d tell you everything right now if I could.”  Ever incapable of taking anything too seriously, her head hung low in a soft chuckle.  “I bet you’d have the most ridiculous dumbass look on your face when you see it’s me.”

She would end the speech there, but the caveat of such a reality quickly caught up with her.

“Well, if you don’t try to kick my ass first.”

Now that they - or at least _she_ \- started, it proved harder to stop.  Whatever tension was there eased with the breeze that so rarely swept through a quiet evening in the slums, and she added an abrupt grunt to the wind as she unceremoniously plopped down on the ground.  Sitting next to her cousin, Puck couldn’t miss the irony of it all.  It was always Sara who needed a good listener, and it was her cousin who would lend an ear.  Now, she relished the reprieve granted by their reversed roles.  Puck, the inexplicably open book; and Sara, the good, albeit unconscious, listener.

“Remember that spot in the Wards on the Citadel where I used to smoke?  Where we used to go watch the ships and talk shit all night when shit got rough?  When your dad was being a colossal dick,” - she ended the last question with a bit of a grunt, nudging Sara with another brush of her knuckle as if it would help her remember - “or when the boy you liked didn’t like you back?”

Puck laughed quietly to herself, forcing the corners of her mouth apart and the air out of it, as if doing so would make enough space to keep the supremely annoying welling of tears from escaping as well.  

“You always cried too fucking much.”

The lack of an answer bought her time to ponder the dingy if not altogether lackluster beige of the alleyway.  Wedged in the second level between a shanty store and Tartarus itself, their platform overlooked much of the slums’ squalor.  Sure enough, Puck was used to _much_ greater heights; the kind that only two scrawny kids with the requisite agility and stubbornness could climb.  And instead of the beige blah of the poverty surrounding them, there was the sleek black neon of Zakera Ward.  Tall enough to watch the transporters whistle by with barely a care, and dark enough so no one would see where they hid past curfew.  Yet even in their more modest setting, she couldn’t help but feel just as invisible - _invincible_ , even.  In Kadara, they had nothing but drunkards staggering home and the still-burning glow of a red giant in their horizons.  Somehow that felt safe enough, if not just as safe as being home again.  

“Reyes…he told me what you said to Zia about him, that he’s a better man than she thought.”  “Heh, well coming from her that’s not really saying shit, but you…”

Puck inched closer to her ever-dreaming listener out of the sudden concern that, perhaps, Sara might fall over without the support of her shoulder.   Looking over the damsel in question, she couldn’t help but glance askance over the formidable Pathfinder. Fast asleep, she looked almost calm if not for the twitchy wrinkle of her nose.  Sara’s face contorted as a result, and with that Puck suppressed what would normally have been a bellowing guffaw.  It was precisely the sort of forbidden moment she planned on remembering for herself, if only to allow herself the luxury of a secret.  

Reyes must enjoy these moments with her, too - not this precisely, or so she hoped, but similar little things.  Sara made some pretty entertaining faces when flustered or nervous, and Puck felt a sharp pang of resentment at her friend for missing this.     

“I don’t know if he really loves you or not, Beans, but…I think he wants to.  You’re something to him.  He’s never gonna say it, that’s…not his style.  With him, it’s all about the little things.  He’s always got that shit-eating grin on his face, but it’s softer when he talks about you.  He asks me to drag a lot of people out of bars for him, but he’s only ever asked me to keep you safe.”

“So…don’t hate him, okay?”

A reply would’ve been nice.  For fuck’s sake, the one time Puck wanted Sara to talk to her…

“And please don’t hate me either.”

A groan answered her this time.  “Nnng… who…?”  Sara turned her head before she had the strength to lift the lid of her eyes.

_Shit.  Shit, shit, shit._

A heavy furrowing of her brows brought a distorted crease over Sara’s features.  She woke with a bellow of a moan, barely able to stretch her still comatose limbs.  A quick turn of her head, and the languid expression of her face very quickly turned to that of exasperation.  

“Hey. Drink this.”

The Pathfinder’s eyes narrowed into tiny slits, and she put forth her best effort into a wobbly, skeptical backwards lean of her head.  Instead, a nagging migraine tipped the weight of her head over, sending it gently down onto Puck’s armor-clad shoulder.   “Where am I?”

“Same place.”  Through pitiful moans of protest, Puck shifted her shoulder so that Sara’s head was as close to upright as it was going to get.  She offered the flask again, with a bit less compromise this time.  “Drink some water.”

After staring back for an awkwardly long time with a slight curl of her upper lip, Sara reluctantly complied.  

“Heh,” she mused as she lowered the flask from her face, “my sixth drink for the night.”

“Finally.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Anyway, can you walk, or am I gonna have to carry you?”

A slow roll of laughter rumbled from her lips.

“What’s so funny?”

The laughter devolved into something of a choking sob. “I don’t… I don’t think I can.”

Puck’s eyebrow twitched in a suppressed groan beneath her mask.

The earlier forebodings of her tears came out in full force, as if Sara had suddenly remembered the very crux of her woes.  “He was supposed to come back. It’s been days!”

Her compassionate savior answered with a protracted silence.  “Tough shit. He isn’t here.”

“Yeah,” Sara shrugged.  “But you are.”

Even in that salt-soaked sardonic tone, even if Sara didn’t know who she was really saying them to, those words from her lips pulled a reluctant but wide smile across Puck’s face.  

“Trust me, it’s good that he sent me.  It’s not like he couldn’t have gotten someone else to do it.  I only get called in for the _really_ important shit, so, you know…take that however you want.”

Sara took the confession with a bemused sigh and a slight roll of her eyes.  Puck would have said more, but the Pathfinder seemed to take to her own guarded reticence as she withdrew further into herself.  With knees pressed firmly against her chest, a wistfulness overtook her temperament in the moments that followed.  

“I’m really tired.”

Having known Sara a _bit_ more than most, Puck was more than tempted to offer up one last-ditch effort to be done with it all: to fling her cousin back over her shoulders and plop her back down on her ship.  But it was precisely the sort of indignity a Ryder would never suffer (much less someone as proud as Sara), so she settled instead to play at being therapist, if only for a moment.

“You know, if he’s such an asshole… why sit around waiting for him?  Why bother with him at all?”

The question struck something of a chord.  

“I don’t know,” she continued. “He just doesn’t seem your type.”  

Puck risked the observation, and she was met with what at least _seemed_ like Sara’s tacit acceptance.  Much to her surprise, the question didn’t come up:  how could she know what was her type, if she had one?  It didn’t matter anyway. She was still in love with Reyes, and he was still not there.

“Maybe,” she countered with an unexpected hint of resignation. “But I know he needs me.”  If Sara had been less tired, no doubt a smile would have followed those words.  Instead she lifted her head enough to stare directly through Puck’s helmet with a newfound air of haughty resolve. “And I like feeling needed.”

“Don’t we all.”

Another yawn rolled from her lungs - wide and seemingly unending with the way she stretched her head back against the wall.  The heaviness in the air seemed to weigh down on her, for soon her face relaxed back into a dreamlike calm before her eyes slowly fluttered to a close.  It only took a few moments before the slowed rhythm of her unconscious breathing motioned the rise and fall of her shoulders.  

“You’re right, though, Beans.  He does need you.”

Puck shifted ever so slightly, careful not to wake her tired cousin.  With her arms freed, she released the airlock keeping her face safe behind its previously impenetrable facade, and wrestled her head from the cracked confines of her helmet.  The chill of the air and the lingering waft of Kadara’s detritus made the very prospect of breathing less worthy of the effort.  Still, she was with family now, and the impulse to leave something of a memento, however transient, presented itself.  Regina May Park, finally exposed to the full scrutiny of her cousin’s presence and Kadara’s night air, planted a slight and ever so careful kiss between Sara’s brows.

“And so do I.”  

Six hundred years and a new galaxy was all it took, apparently, to feel at home again.

* * *

 

“That’s…hmm.”  Vetra propped her hand over her waist, letting her eyes wander off to the floor in piqued contemplation.

“Yeah,” Sara replied.  She ran a timid hand over the back of her neck.  “It’s stupid.”

She tried to ponder the blurry pieces left in her headache-ridden mind, but by the way the very veins in her head throbbed, it proved too much of an ordeal.  Sara let out a tired breath.  Somehow, she’d have to find a way to shake off all of last night’s aches.

“Let’s…let’s just get out of here.  I think…I’ve had enough of Kadara for a while.”


	7. Thicker than Blood, Pt. I

Nights like this, when a hushed vidcall whisked his sister away unceremoniously at some ridiculous hour, left Oliver Park with plenty of time to think.  

Too much.  Too much time to wonder if keeping to his silent memorization of her antics was enough; whether the face she showed him or the one she showed the rest of Kadara was the true mask, and whether her lies, old as she was and proliferating as they were the more she worked for Reyes, would catch up to them sooner or later.  

The sky was already a few shades lighter by the time the soft whirring of the shack’s door announced her return.  His sister, the formidable outlaw known as ‘Puck’, dragged her feet across the threshold, wrenched off her grisly helmet, and let it fall irreverently on an empty crate next to her.  Oliver watched silently as she stared at the floor for a moment after the door shut behind her, heaving exhausted breaths in and out before realizing she wasn’t quite safe from  _ all  _ scrutiny just yet.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

A classic Reggie response.  No explanations, no excuses, and certainly no apologies.

“I didn’t say anything,” Oliver replied with a shrug as she shed piece after piece of her armor, like she couldn’t get it off of her quickly enough.  The tension in his neck and shoulders released bit by bit with each hard  _ clank _ on the floor.  Little by little, she left ‘Puck’ and everything her alias entailed behind.  Soon, it was just Reggie standing in front of him again, desperately trying to counter the ever-present nuisance of helmet hair as she secured the top half of her undersuit around her waist and let the skin exposed by her fraying tank top breathe real air once more.

“I know, that's why I said ‘don't  _ look _ at me like that’.”

An emerging trend in this routine was a stab of bittersweet melancholy once his sister’s face was wholly hers again.  It hadn't changed much over the years,  although she’d lightened her hair from the same deep black as his to a warm chestnut brown and went from a tight ponytail to cut short and shaggy once helmet hair became a daily inevitability.  Years weren't what wore on her, though.   _ He  _ was,  _ his  _ burdens that she'd been fighting him to carry since they were kids.  Four years her senior, he’d always been her hero, her Superman; the last thing Oliver ever wanted was to be to his sister the reason she looked so damn tired. 

The heaviness in that idea wouldn’t let him laugh at her joke like he knew she wanted.  Instead, he gathered her into a tight hug, the fraternal sort that ended with a healthy rake of his knuckles across the top of her head.  The screech inlaid with rolling, high-pitched laughter as she tore out of his arms drew out a chuckle, and things felt okay again.  This was normal.  This...this, he would let be his fault.

“You okay, assmaster?” she taunted, and threw a light shove at his shoulder.  “Anything happen while I was gone?”

Oliver plucked a wrench off of the shelf next to him and waved it back and forth between two fingers.  

“Well, buttface, I dropped this, and it made a loud noise.”

Whether from his facetious answer or his low effort contribution of ‘buttface’ he couldn’t say, but Reggie’s entire body groaned.  

“Chodefarmer,” she muttered, a smile teasing at her face as she opened her omni-tool.  Starting that medical scanning software she’d stolen from the Nexus before they left, no doubt.  “How’s your head?  Any better?”

It was his turn to let his entire body groan.  Not a day had gone by since he woke on this evil-smelling rock that he hadn’t spent at least a few minutes awash in the orange glow of that fucking scanner. 

“Just fine, dicksocket,” he replied, giving it a bit more thought this time.  Predictably, she grinned her approval behind the omni-tool screen, but she didn’t reply.  Data from her scans raced in between them and held her attention, interrupting the succor he’d found in the flow of banter between them.  Brows furrowed, Oliver waved a hand in front of her, hoping to break her concentration.  “Come on, put that thing away.”

“Shh,” she hissed, swatting his hand away while keeping her eyes glued on the screen.  “I’ve gotta-”

“Hey, Reg…” Momentarily abandoning their game, Oliver set a firm but gentle hand on her arm and slowly lowered it.  He met her protesting eyes with raised brows he hoped would drive the point home.  

“I’m fine, kiddo.”

When she was younger, Reggie would pop her hips out to one side, plant her hands on them, sneer exactly the way she was now and defiantly insist she was absolutely  _ not  _ a ‘kiddo’.  Now, it was all she could do not to let him know just how endearing the nickname had become.  He leaned in a little closer, eyes still locked on hers, and waggled his eyebrows as if to say,  _ you know I’m right. _

She did, but she didn’t want to.  Stubborn as she was, a tacit understanding existed between them: no secrets, and no lies, including whether or not Oliver was, indeed, fine.  Her face softened for a moment with a reluctant exhale, and, in true Reggie form, hid immediately behind a smirk rather than say the words out loud. 

“We’re on ‘E’,” she huffed, closing her omni-tool and struggling to keep the smirk from widening any further, “and it’s  _ my  _ turn, elcor breath.”

“Oh, well, in that case, I’m fine,” he retorted, plastering a smug grin across his face, “fart factory.”

Reggie shook her head between snickers, and brushed past him in search of the large crate in the next room that held their stash of food.  That one always made her laugh, whether she wanted to or not, and this time was no exception.  For everything about Reggie that changed, there were a precious few that never would, and Oliver was content for the moment knowing that was one of them.

“So, what was it?”

“What was what?” she called through a mouthful of some sort of jerky.  He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know what she made it from.  He was, however, sure that she knew what he meant; when Reggie asked for clarification like that, it only meant he wouldn’t like the answer.

“What was so important you had to rush out of here in the middle of the night without saying where you were going?”

The rummaging stopped, and the crate lid fell shut.  Reggie appeared in the doorway a moment later, still vigorously chewing, eyeing him with a rancor that didn’t match her nonchalant shrug.  

“It wasn’t.”

Or, it meant he  _ really _ wouldn’t like the answer. 

Typical Reggie evasiveness, skirting around the temptation to lie by avoiding the subject altogether.  Between the racket she made when she left waking him and the anxiety of waiting for her to come back, Oliver wasn’t in the mood for games.

“You’re not Puck here, you know.”  

Her face scrunched into the exaggerated look she always gave when she was playing dumb.  

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Oliver couldn’t have asked for a better demonstration of what he’d just told her.

“It means when you make that face here, I can actually see it.”  

Her face leveled into a scowl, and Oliver couldn't resist a hushed chuckle at how her protest only reinforced his point.  He walked to the crate by the door and lifted her helmet off of it, giving it a soft toss upwards and catching it just next to his head with a taunting shake.  “It means this…this is…”

He saw it out of the corner of his eye, and grasped the helmet with two hands in front of him for closer inspection.  At first, he thought it might have been a seam in the plating he'd never noticed before, but instead of a smooth, straight line, it was crooked, bent inward and dented around it.  Some of the circuitry inside was visible.  Not seamed.  Broken.  

“Shit, this...this had to be one hell of a blow, Reg.” He raised his head slowly to look at her, only blinking when the sting in his eyes reminded him of the necessity.  “What happened?”

Reggie snatched it from him with the same wide-eyed consternation as if it were some private thing, like she’d caught him going through her holos or her extranet browser history.  

“Nothing.  You don’t have to worry about me.”

Oliver folded his arms across his chest and quirked one eyebrow.

“Okay, except yes, I do.”  He gestured towards the helmet cradled in her arms with a flat, open hand.  “That could easily have been way worse.  You said this one would be easy, and you should’ve been back hours ago.”  

Reggie relegated the helmet to the floor with the rest of her armor and folded her arms in front of her, her face set in the sort of indignant look mothers gave their children when they need to wordlessly emphasized what they’d just fucking said.

Oliver sighed, and shook his head.  

“I know...I know you’re helping him to help me.  I get it.  But...is all this really worth it just to keep me from getting headaches?”

“It’s not just headaches, Ollie, and you know it.” 

He did.  The Initiative disqualified most L2 biotics from participating, and for good reason.  Cryostasis was risky, and the revival process for an L2, especially one as finicky and troublesome as his, required time and the utmost care and precision.  None of which, of course, were afforded him when Kett shot their shuttle out of the sky and it was either burning to death in his stasis pod, or being dragged out to risk severe stasis sickness and, well, his own brain killing him.  Out of the frying pan, he supposed.  The seizures, at least, had stopped for the most part, and the migraines were starting to retreat back to their somewhat bearable pre-cryo level.  He shot a begrudging glance at the old white cane leaning in a corner; it had gleefully been abandoned there for a week now, but he tasted a lingering bitterness in his mouth at having ever relied on it at all.

“And what do you mean, ‘all this’?”

“This!”  Unable to focus on a single thing to point out, he threw his hands into the air, the haphazard flailing motions encompassing everything a simple explanation could not.  The armor littering the floor, the few things they owned or inherited from the shack’s previous owner in perfect order yet somehow in complete disarray, the busted helmet that should never have been his sister’s face to begin with.

“I hate that you have to stick your neck out and do shit like this because of me.  That’s not your job, Reggie, it’s mine.”  

Her face fell in a deadpan straightness as she cocked her head to one side.  Oliver felt like a petulant child in a history vid, wailing that, in running herself ragged to keep him alive, his sister had stolen his birthright.  What jabbed at him the most, though, wasn’t that it was his little sister instead of himself who hid her face and played sidekick to a smuggler for his sake; it was the fact that, if necessary, she’d do far worse. 

“You and Reyes...this arrangement you have with him has done a lot for us, and I appreciate it, I do,” he began, in a half-assed attempt to be reassuring, “but...it’s not worth sitting up wondering if tonight’s the night he gets my baby sister killed.”

She knit her brows together, and her chest and shoulders rose in unison as she inhaled sharply through her nose and growled through her teeth.  “Seriously, Ollie?”

“Yes, Regina, seriously!  What if you’re not so lucky next time?  What if next time it’s your skull and not your helmet?”  

Thanks to a cursedly vivid imagination, his hypothetical scenario felt very, very real.  Too real.  It  _ was  _ lucky.  Any time he saw her could easily be the last, and her huff of haughty dismissal did little to ease his mind.  

“You’re all I have left, kiddo.  I can’t lose you too.”

His hands came to rest on her shoulders.  She stared piquedly up at him before she relaxed, and curled one hand around his.  That was Reggie, though, wasn’t it?  Laughing in the face of things that could kill her on a whim and charging headlong into things she couldn’t be sure she could charge away from?  Well,  _ she  _ would be sure, at least.  ‘I can’t’, in that context, didn’t exist in her vocabulary.

“I promise, Ollie.  It was nothing,” she replied, a hint of a fond smile pulling over her face.  “Reyes wanted me to go get some drunk out of his room at Tartarus, and they got a little feisty.”

She puffed out a half-assed giggle as she spoke.  Oliver bit at his lip; pain in the ass kid never took anything seriously.  

“I’d call that more than ‘a little feisty’.”

If the stony frown that fell over Reggie’s face was any indication, his flippant tone failed miserably to convince her it was anything other than a smokescreen.

“Okay, look.  I can fucking handle this shit, okay?” she spat, stepping backwards out of his hands and leaning indignantly against the crate.  “Stop acting like it’s the end of the goddamned universe because Reyes asked me to go drag beans out of a fucking bar.” 

With a roll of her eyes, she shoved off of the crate and paced around the room, head down and hands on her hips.  Oliver rubbed at the back of his neck; the headaches never really went away, but they sure as hell spread down to his neck and shoulders when Reggie said stupid shit like that.  A practical amount of caution was prudent, if anything, given their situation, and if dragging beans out of a bar for Reyes meant she came home with a gigantic dent in her helmet, it was more than…

_ Wait… _

_ Something  _ about that phrase was...familiar.  It poked blindly at his memory, like someone trying to find a keyhole in a dark room.  Irritating, to be sure, but resolute, sure he’d figure it out if he just kept trying.  His eyes found her once more, narrowed into slits and staring beams through her skull.  

“...what did you just say?”

Reggie made a face.  “What?”

“Just now, what did you say?”

“‘What’?” she replied, mocking him by waving her hands next to her head.  Oliver only rolled his eyes. 

“Come on, I’m being serious.  You said you had to drag ‘beans’ out of a bar.”

“Yeah, a dead-weighted person?  A sack of beans?”

He raised an incredulous eyebrow, and cleared his throat with a gruff hack.  “Yeah, Reg, you’ve never used that analogy in your life.  In fact, the only person you’ve ever referred to as ‘Beans’ is...is…”

_ No.   _ It couldn’t be.  

He raised his head, eyes round, simultaneously hoping for and dreading confirmation. 

“ _ Sara. _ ”

And there it was, in the minute tics at the corners of Reggie’s eyes and mouth, and the way the words hung in her mouth.  His heart started to race, and he clenched a fist, symbolically grasping the revelation.  

_ Shit...she’s here.  Sara’s here.  They made it. _

“It’s been over a year, Ollie.  Sara’s dead.  They’re all dead.  The ark’s gone.”

Oliver’s breath caught in his throat, and heat flushed through his cheeks.  He'd seen that look on his sister’s face a thousand-no,  _ thousands _ of times before.  Well, he'd observed it.  It was a look she gave everyone else to puppy-eye them into believing every word she said, and it always melted away the moment she was alone with him again.  Now that he was the look’s recipient, however, he wondered at just how she’d managed to avoid getting her ass knocked out for it.

She lied, right to his fucking face.

There had to be some reason, some explanation.  Sara didn't get drunk enough to need dragged away from anywhere without cause, so  _ something  _ must've happened.  Was she marooned here?  A fight with her dad?  Exiled herself, perhaps?  

No, no way.  Internally, Sara was as much at odds with her father as Reggie was, but where Reggie made no secret of it and could barely be in the same room with the man without trying to bite his head off over one thing or another, Sara kept it to herself.  She played by the rules.  Besides, if she was exiled from the Initiative, there's no reason Reggie would've dragged her anywhere other than back here.  She was in Reyes’s room at Tartarus, so maybe... _ no,  _ definitely not  _ that.   _ Even then, Reggie would think it was too funny not to tell him about it.  

No, there was only one reason he could think of that she'd want him to think Sara was dead, a stupid and infuriatingly selfish reason that only made his lip curl harder.

She was happy playing outlaw on Kadara, and if Sara was alive, there’d be no reason to stay.

Oliver remained silent long enough that Reggie’s shoulders started to relax, and she adopted a kind half-smile that served as an apologetic gesture of sorts.  That the Hyperion was lost, all of the Initiative’s plans had gone to shit, and no one else was coming was an unspoken consensus between them, accepted as fact but never uttered out loud. In truth, he said nothing not because of what she said, but because there was too much  _ he  _ wanted to say.  The words stuck in a gaggle in his mind, too frantic to organize themselves enough to be manageable.  

A dull throbbing manifested at the base of his skull, and he could feel the hairs there start to stand on end with the threat of rising biotic energy.   _ Great.   _ He wasn't glowing yet, at least, but he drew out his next inhale in hopes it wouldn't get to that point.  Glowing would hurt.  Anything more than that might kill him.

When she reached forward to place a reassuring hand on his arm, he scoffed, and heaved the only word he could get past his lips:

“Wow…”

Reggie sighed and pursed her lips to one side.  

“Hey, I know it’s bullshit, but-”

‘Bullshit’ was a vast oversimplification.  Oliver closed his eyes and threw one hand up in front of her face, the other clenched into a fist at his hip.  This ended  _ now. _

“See, this is exactly what I’m talking about,” he interrupted, centering his eyes on hers so there could be no doubt in her mind how painfully serious he was.  “I know every lie you’ve ever told, but not one of them has ever,  _ ever _ been to me.”

His skin was bathed in pins and needles.  The thought raced through his mind like a gremlin, grabbing and nagging and clawing through every attempt he made to block it.

_ She lied, she lied, she lied, she fucking lied... _

“This work, these people you’re dealing with...it’s changing you.”

Blood pounded through his neck and in his wrists, both of his fists clenched now, desperately holding on to the last bits of control he had.  Despite the spearing pain at the realization that he’d never, ever had to preface a question to her this way, he had to ask.  He had to know.  He had to hear her say it.

“Tell me the truth, Reggie.  Sara’s alive, isn’t she?”

She wouldn’t even say the word.  She just stood there, twitching her head up and down in the tiniest nod she could possibly have managed.

_ God damn it, Reggie.  God damn it. _

“How long?” he muttered under his breath, despite knowing full well he wouldn’t be able to keep his biotics at bay if he did.    

She shifted on her feet a little, too stubborn to break eye contact but too...what, ashamed? To maintain it.  It came out in a look that was both sinister, angry at him for figuring her out, and infuriatingly sheepish.  She  _ should _ be sheepish.   _ Embarrassed. _  Of all her answers in this conversation, he was going to like this one the least.  This one was going to hurt.

“A month, maybe.”

_ Fuck. _

The pins and needles became tiny stings, steadily intensifying and radiating in all directions, setting his skin ablaze while leaving his insides impossibly cold, as if all the heat was being sucked out of him through the dark purple corona that erupted around him as the last of his control slipped away.

“Hey, wh…” Reggie gasped, throwing her arms towards him in a near panic, “Stop, okay?  You'll hurt yourself!” 

It  _ did  _ hurt.  

It burned.  It stung.  It coursed through him, sped up his heart and breathing while seeming to slowly rip the very fibers of his muscles apart, pressing outward in excruciating throbs inside his skull, tearing his skin to pieces as if he’d explode if he let it go on much longer.  

And that was only the biotics.  The chorus in his mind continued, prodding and squeezing, crushing him to dust with every refrain.

_ She lied.  She lied.  She lied. _

_ “Hey!” _

Reggie managed to roar louder than his thoughts, and it jarred him enough to dissipate much of the energy, leaving him with only the familiar pins and needles again.  Things were bearable, for now.  She grabbed him by the arms and looked him over, seemingly relieved and satisfied he wouldn’t be in a coma anytime soon.

The chorus remained.  It wasn’t enough.  It wasn’t enough, and he couldn’t let it slide.  Not this time.  

He tore backwards out of her arms and to the footlocker next to his bed.  Inside was a rucksack, and a piecemeal set of armor scavenged from dead outlaws.  He filled the rucksack with what little was left, and set about strapping the armor over his clothes.     

“Ollie, what the fuck?” Reggie protested.  He stormed past her, heaving the rucksack over one shoulder, and opened his omni-tool to access the door.  She feigned disinterest at first, but her voice trembled in desperation a little more with each press of a button.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Oliver closed his omni-tool to the tune of the lock mechanism whirring open.  As the panels separated and the blue-tinged landscape of early morning Kadara coalesced between them, he turned towards his sister once more, shifted the rucksack again, and straightened his back with a resolute stare. 

“The port.  I’m going to find her.”  

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr: @chargenovasmash
> 
> Thank you for reading! More coming soon!


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